1. Roll Back & Stop Parking Meter
Rate Hikes!By raising the parking meter fees, the Mayor
& City Council are taking money out of our pockets and giving it to Morgan Stanley. Let the people decide parking meter rates, not the banks.
2. End the Privatization of the Parking Meters!Take Back the Meters!
Street and Parks parking
is a city service on public property, not a for-profit private business! Mayor Daley
criminally handed over the city's parking meters to Wall Street giant Morgan
Stanley for 75 years. The
Mayor's nephew, William Daley Jr., is a Morgan Stanley executive.
Morgan Stanley has
raised our parking rates 400% in most places.3. No New Parking Meters or Pay Boxes!LAZ, the company Morgan Stanley hired to
run the city's parking meters, and the Chicago Park District,
are planning for thousands of new meters and pay boxes—and even more rate
increases.

Join the People's
campaign: We'll be hitting the street with
petitions to roll back and stop the parking meter hikes. We'll also
be engaging in street actions, community meetings and much more.
Join us in struggle!

Let's fight back. Working people, especially the poor and oppressed,
shouldn't have to pay more for the
things they need during a time of economic crisis in which millions
of people are being laid off. The city should
be funding jobs, health care, transit and education, not selling us
out the banks.

Initiated by the Party for Socialism
and Liberation, a member of the ANSWER Coalition

Take Action Now to
Stop Parking Meter Expansion on the South Side!Call Alderman John Pope at 773-721-1999

24-hour vigil by community center
has stopped city from installing new parking meters in front of the
center. Centro Communitario Juan Diego provides vital services to workers,
the
poor and immigrants in need. Call the Alderman now and tell him, "No
meters outside the community center."

For over a month, the Centro Communitario
Juan Diego on Chicago’s south side has staged militant neighborhood
actions and a 24-hour vigil to stop the installation of parking meters
outside of their community center.

The community group has marched on the South Chicago Chamber of Commerce
and Alderman John Pope’s office and home. They have withstood various
attempts by the city and the chamber’s hired security goons to
intimidate and silence them.

The vigil has received widespread support from the community and according
to organizer Robert Garcia has provided "A sense that the people in
our community, poor workers and immigrants, can act together and stand up
to powerful business interests."

Over 1,500 petitions have been collected to stop the installation of
parking meters outside the center and along Commercial Avenue.

A 24-hour vigil outside Centro Communitario Juan Diego on
Chicago's
south side has stopped the city from installing new parking
meters along
Commercial Avenue.

Free public street parking outside the
center is very important. The Centro Communitario Juan Diego provides
vital social services for the working-class neighborhood, which is made up
of mostly Latinos, African Americans and immigrants. The center provides
health care and literacy programs as well as distributing food and
clothing.

The center also fights for tenants’ rights and against gentrification.
The installation of the parking meters, at the request of the chamber of
commerce, is part of a wider project by real estate investors and local
politicians to take over and "develop" the larger lakefront area
on the south side.

In the past couple of years, the campaign of attacks against the community
has included fraudulent home inspections, numerous threats against anybody
who stands up to the program of neighborhood cleansing and the
organization of environmental and antiviolence groups that are playing an
underhanded role by providing "progressive" cover for
gentrification.

The chamber has pressured small businesses on the same street as the
community center to oppose the movement to stop the meters and has printed
slanders about the center in its newsletter. The chamber has spread
outrageous lies in its publication, accusing the center of encouraging
illegal acts, engaging in "illegal" protests and working for
"outside" forces.

Alderman Pope arrogantly dismissed the center’s petitions, saying that
many of the petitions looked like they were signed by children.

Workers from all communities in Chicago and beyond should join hands with
the south side community and the Centro Communitario Juan Diego as they
stand up and fight back against the city’s anti-worker parking meter
expansion. To help stop the installation of meters oustide of Centro
Communitario Juan Diego call Alderman Pope at 773-721-1999.

Chicago
Mayor’s parking meter swindle sold out people to Morgan StanleyJohn BeachamMonday, June 22

Join fight-back campaign to
rollback parking meter rate hikes!

On Dec. 4, 2008, the City Council
voted 40-5 to illegally sell the city’s parking meters to Morgan
Stanley. The vote was taken two days after the sale was made public
and finalized. The full contract was not disclosed to the full City
Council prior to the vote.

Volunteers
collect petitions and handout leaflets on
the street corners between Daley Plaza and
the Thompson Center on June 23

For a paltry sum of $1.15 billion
(reasonable estimates put the actual worth of the deal at $5
billion), 36,000 meters were sold behind the backs of the people to
the finance company for a period of 75 years.

The bank took possession of the
meters Feb. 13. Under the agreement, Mayor Daley and the City
Council have allowed LAZ, the company running the meters for the
Wall Street giant, to raise parking fees up to 400 percent, increase
meter hours and days and install thousands of new automated pay
boxes. Morgan Stanley is planning to raise parking rates every year
until 2013.

Widespread dissent and a grassroots
boycott campaign—particularly sparked by a ticket-writing rampage
by LAZ—have forced the issue out into the open. It has now come to
light that the mayor’s office, secretly working on the sale of the
meters for two years, never seriously considered any other bidder
except Morgan Stanley. Mayor Daley’s nephew, William Daley Jr, is
a Morgan Stanley executive.

The Chicago Park District is also
raising parking meter rates, increasing meter hours and installing
new meters and pay boxes.

The parking meters, a source of
public revenue, collected on public streets, are meant to pay for
city services. Now, they have been criminally turned over to a
massive private financial institution. Los Angeles and Philadelphia
have also pursued privatizing their parking meters.

During the worst economic crisis in a
generation, while the failed banks are being rushed billion-dollar
handouts and government-guaranteed loans, the mayor and the city are
slashing services, laying off workers and making workers pay more
for fees and services.

Outrageously, on June 18, Mayor Daley
promised $4.8 billion in public money in the city’s bid to win the
contest to be the host city for the 2016 Olympics.

People over profits: Money for
jobs and people’s needs!

Under the Daley-brokered deal,
billions of dollars will be stolen directly from workers’ pockets
and flow into hands of the bankers at Morgan Stanley. No politician
should have the right to sell-off public property to profit-hungry
corporations.

The sale of the parking meters is
part of an all-out attack on workers in Illinois. Mayor Daley and
Governor Quinn are planning to make billions of dollars in cuts to
public services and lay off thousands of people. Badly needed health
care and community services for the poorest and most oppressed
workers are on the chopping block.

Money should be used to bail out
workers and create jobs, not to swell the bank accounts of the rich
class of owners.

Private companies, especially banks,
by their very nature, put profits before people. By law, they must
put the profit margin above all other concerns. Nearly all the
capitalist politicians, as is clearly on display in the city’s
sale of the parking meters, put the needs of the rich over the
majority.

The banks and their irrational system
created the economic crisis. It is the banks that, unable and
unwilling to lend in an unprofitable economic climate, are forcing
the unnecessary layoffs of millions of people and directly kicking
millions of people out of their homes. At the same time, Wall Street
CEOs of bailed out companies continue to rake in millions of dollars
in bonuses—all paid for by working people.

The banks should have to pay, not get
paid for the increased suffering of millions of workers, especially
workers in oppressed communities, facing the brunt of the economic
crisis.